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Hugh Pickens writes "According to an article by Tony Bradley, news is spreading quickly online that HP is going to clear out its vast TouchPad inventory by dropping the price to an offer you can't refuse. Rumor has it that beginning Saturday the 16Gb TouchPad will be $99, and the 32Gb TouchPad will be a measly $149. 'It is actually a fairly capable tablet. It's just not an iPad 2,' writes Bradley. 'For $500 it was a joke. For $300 it was still a shady deal. For $99 it's a steal.' HP has learned the hard way, and quickly pulled the plug on its tablet, proving that HP never had a solid tablet or mobile strategy and that it was really just looking for an excuse to get out. 'The reality is that my Best Buy is swimming in unsold HP TouchPad inventory,' adds Bradley. 'I went out tonight and picked mine up at the regular $400 price to beat the rush. Situations like this are why they invented price matching. I can just go back with my receipt once the fire sale starts and get the price adjusted and the difference refunded.'"

Does the HP TouchPad tablet qualify for the Price Match policy?No. The HP TouchPad is on clearance and we will no longer be selling the units so we will not offer any price matches. We do offer a 60-day return/exchange policy for this product.

Under the risk of getting troll-modded, I have to respectfully decline this generous offer- HP hardware is and has been, to the best of my knowledge and experience, a piece of crap; a fact well in accordance with their customer support and "services".

It is furthermore obvious from this recent expansion (read; migration) that they are very well versed into riding the surface tension of every new economic bubble, exiting just in time to screw their customers and maximize their profits.

There are many many reasons to not consider this purchase. In fact, I find very few reasons to buy it, and mind you: I really wanted this thing to succeed. I was looking to buy a second generation device and was praying it became true competition for the iPad.

Reasons to buy it go down to:

A) Get a disposable tablet as you would buy a disposable newspaper.B) Own a piece of history, of one of the few decent non Google, Apple or Microsoft OS tablets to ever attempt step up to the challenge and join the race.

It's still a hundred dollars we're talking about, so it's far from "disposable" for the vast majority of people. Really, I can't think of many reasons to buy it, even at clearance prices. Maybe if it were $20, I'd buy it just to take it apart.

I do agree, but then again some other people do consider 99 dollars to be disposable money. Ask anyone that has been married. Not to be chauvinist but my wife will go through 3 of these in one visit to the shoe store, in stuff she may wear 3 or 5 times tops.

So under such a light, yea, it may be seen disposable, and even maybe as a "preview" for what owning an iPad may be like. Like it enough? Then hold on with it until the iPad 3 comes out and then try to get 30 bucks from the TouchPad out of eBay.

If you really think that "anyone who has been married" views a hundred bucks as disposable, then I suggest you broaden your horizons a bit. The sort of people you have apparently met in your life are all spoiled fat cats, and it would do your perspective a world of good to be exposed to some normal people.

Having plenty of money is fine. Not realizing that the overwhelming majority of people aren't so lucky is a serious character flaw.

No need to get aggressive, it was not meant to be taken literally. You know, a bit of hyperbole.

But also got to say, unless you doing the same, you are going for a bigger insult there. Just because you see 99 dollars as "disposable" does not mean you are a "spoiled fat cat". Budget is very relative to your living situation, cost of living in your area, among many other things. There is no such a thing as "normal people" when you are talking about economical status. The middle class in the US has a huge rang

I apologize then. There are a lot of people who enjoy posting things very much like your earlier posts (talking about throwing away $300 on every trip to the shoe store), as a way of bragging. I try to cut them down to size whenever I see it, because society's deification of wealth is tremendously harmful.

But I do have to correct you on one point. There is such a thing as "normal people". The distribution of wealth in this country is not a normal distribution in which most people are near the mean incom

FYI, they just updated the web site. You can order from BestBuy.com now. It appears that they have both the 16GB and 32GB versions available. We just picked up a few.

The sad part as, I was in the market for a tablet. i checked the retail stores, and then compared what they had to the Barnes and Noble Nook Color. The Nook was well worth the money. It only lasted a few hours before I wiped it and put CM7 on. I will say, the Nook is a damned nice tablet, price or otherwise. I'm getting the HP Touchpads

According to iSuppli [isuppli.com](whose accuracy is debateable; but should at least provide ballpark numbers), somebody is eating a major per unit loss to provide the $99/$150 price point. Frankly, unless those numbers are pretty pessimistic, I'm a little bit surprised that the units were retailed at all a little surprising. It'd almost be worth tearing the 16GB units down for the screen and battery in bulk...

I applied the 80-20 rule here: It's got a web browser which means it can do 80% of what the iPad can do at 20% of the price, discontinued or not.

Before anyone brings up "apps" as the reason to go with the iPad at a 400% price premium - let me say that I own an iPhone and the overwhelming majority of time I spend with it is in the email and safari apps. Apps are nice when they are available - especially given the iPhone's small form factor that makes interacting with some websites painful - but not a nec

I tried one out at Carphone Warehouse today (owned by Best Buy UK). When I tried to read http://news.bbc.co.uk/ [bbc.co.uk] it kept refreshing the page every time I tried to scroll up or down, and it took about 15-30 seconds every time to do this, making the browsing experience so frustrating it was virtually unusable. Having tried all the tablets in there, the iPad is the only slab I would buy. I do have an Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S which I am very happy with, but nobody seems to have an answer to the iPa

Buying discontinued obsolete software and hardware combinations is almost always wrong, at any price. That's why no one should buyt computers on Craigslist

Well, if I've replaced it with something better then I won't be using it even if it's a working computer as such so the value proposition still makes sense. I get to unload a box I wouldn't use, they get an upgrade for their even more obsolete computer real cheap. Believe it or not, there's people that still find new "value" PCs far too expensive. And there's people that really need a lot of horsepower who'll sell their old stuff long before it's really obsolete - to a non-power user it's still more than ad

He's AC and he's obviously trolling saying something as stupid as buying "obsolete" hardware is wrong at any price. This is/., most of us probably have hardware we bought at one point that was obsolete just to tinker with.

The Guarantee does not apply to: Our competitors' website prices, offers that include financing, bundling of items, free items, pricing errors, mail-in offers, competitors' service prices, items that are advertised as limited-quantity, out of stock, open-box, clearance, refurbished/used items, BestBuy.com Midnight Sale and special hour sale events, BestBuy.com Outlet Center and Marketplace items, and items for sale Thanksgiving Day through the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Emphasis mine. I'm 100% confident that the HP tablet will be marked as both "limited-quantity" and "clearance".

Best Buy stores were ordered this morning to return all unsold stock to HP. Unless you were in the store and got a price match before amanager came around with the update, you are out of luck as far as BB.

Same deal for Staples and HHGregg.

Walmart stores had them at the sale price this morning (and ran out quickly).

More like was, and in the blink of an eye. Every place around here is sold out and Best Buy took 'em all off the shelves to send them back to HP. I imagine there will be some slow firesales from HP later as they arrive.

Can one remove the WebOS and replace it with Android? Otherwise this about as useful as the Apple Newton. It's neat, but if the operating system is going the way of the Dodo, then who is going to develop apps for this thing?

Try WebOS first. It's actually a really good OS. It's linux. Rooting it is as simple as typing in the Konami Code to put it in Developer Mode (root).

There are a lot of homebrew apps for it, with their own Homebrew appstore, PreWare. Well, not an appstore really because it's all free there.

Palm's problem was they had crappy hardware for it, and insanely bad advertising. HP hasn't done anything much with it since they bought it a year ago. Sad. A very intuitive and good looking OS. The one thing you will miss out with on the TouchPad is the gesture area that is on the phones. They make task switching pretty awesome when you are multitasking a lot of things. Another bad move by HP to leave that off the TouchPad.

I loved my Sprint Pre. While WebOS was lacking in a number of features, it was extremely refined in what it did do; went the Apple route (what it does, make it do well) rather than the MS/Android route (does almost everything, but isn't very elegant). The hardware did suck, not so much in specs, but the build quality. The slider would unhinge, touchscreens would stop responding, power button break, etc.

Messed around with a TP today at Staples.. it does have the same gesture area that the Pre had -

The problem that follows is hardware support, and support for the GPU is immediately out the window, let alone anything else on it that might be dependent on binary blobs. I believe webOS used glibc, so you might have luck with them, in contrast to Android.

So it's a tablet with an operating system that nobody develops for (WebOS), that puts all my stuff "in the cloud", that looks as locked down as the iPad without any of the benefits of the iPad. I mean, seriously, what in the world am I going to do with this thing?

One Word: Android. I doubt it will be more than 1-2 months before someone Jailbreaks it and has an Android install. Then you will have the world's cheapest full featured Android tablet for $400 less than anyone else with a similarly featured tablet.

They made a locked down versions for corporate buyers who wanted it locked for security reasons (corporate IT could still get root, general users couldn't). Anything you buy off Amazon, Walmart, BestBuy, etc, is all unlocked.

Let's see, decent video player, web browser, ebook reader, good for reading technical pdf's, same screen as ipad2, comparable hardware with anything out there now AND you can program directly on it using html5 and their javascript framework that exposes the hardware.

What the hell are you doing on slashdot because you clearly aren't a geek! It'd be worth it just to carry around programming reference pdfs.

I got an iPad first week released. Love it. For all the development Apple has poured into iPad/iOS, all I have ever used it for is listed above. I'm recommending TouchPad to anyone that wants a tablet.

use it as extra screen, mount it on your desk, hang it on the wall as a cheap reasonably high quality photoframe, mount it in wc.. endless possibilities, really, for 99 bucks it's not bad if you can find it, even if you only use it to read some old mad magazines.

HP's Eric Cador said [time.com], "In the tablet world, we're going to become better than number one. We call it number one plus."

Even without hindsight making it look stupid... how the f*** can *anyone* utter such mindlessly silly drivel with a straight face? It sounds like a cross between something from David Brent in "The Office" and Homer Simpson.

If you are in the industry and still think you can compete with Apple, you will end up like HP.

The lesson here is not about solid engineering, eye-catching design, or pricing. It is about how to avoid contesting something that is in a league of its own, in the zone, and has become a force of nature. They're at Exxon levels. And to do that as a tech company that actually makes something is insane.

Apple right now is Mike Tyson in his heyday. Many Tyson fans didn't follow boxing. They followed Mike. It's the same with Apple. Most people who bought an iPad don't even know the specs. The iPad commercial probably isn't what got them to buy it either. They simply don't care.

HP spent a ton of money getting celebrities to do fancy commercials, and the design and specs of their Tablet isn't bad either. But it's too bad, because no one cares.

Apple has gotten to the point where people just buy their products because everybody chants how great they are. If you dare step in the ring with them, they'll knock you the &%$# out and take everything you put into the fight.

I am not an Apple fan, but it doesn't take one to see what is going on. If you understood the phenomenon that is Apple right now, you'd think twice before picking a fight.

How many Android phone were sold to people who wanted an iPhone but couldn't get one?How many Android phones are sold by wireless companies that want to sell iPhones but can't?How many Android phones are built by manufacturers that want to build an Apple product but can't?

It is Apple versus the world. Android is their weapon of choice. But nothing is beating the iPhone. It just so happens that every competitor has the same OS. To say that that OS is made by Google so Google is beating Apple is like coloring

How many Android phone were sold to people who wanted an iPhone but couldn't get one?
How many Android phones are sold by wireless companies that want to sell iPhones but can't?
How many Android phones are built by manufacturers that want to build an Apple product but can't?

It is Apple versus the world. Android is their weapon of choice. But nothing is beating the iPhone. It just so happens that every competitor has the same OS. To say that that OS is made by Google so Google is beating Apple is like coloring an apple orange and pretending to compare oranges.

I can't answer those questions and you can't either. You have provided no proof that manufacturers want to build iOS devices. No proof whatsoever.
You can split hairs all you want that does not detract from the fact that when it comes to OS marketshare Android is way ahead of iOS in smartphone OS marketshare.

How many Android phone were sold to people who wanted an iPhone but couldn't get one?

I know this statement raised a lot of Slashdotters' hackles, but there is some evidence it's true [changewaveresearch.com]. But in reality, all those Android owners who claim to want an iPhone may or may not actually switch - people tend to be dissatisfied with what they have, no matter what it is. Really, only time will tell if it's true or not... Slashdotters' rantings aside.

> But nothing is beating the iPhone. It just so happens that every competitor has the same OS.

That is the same fanboy thinking (or lack of) that says Apple is beating the PC because they are (at times, depending on how you count...) the #1 selling brand. And if the competition is Apple vs. Dell Apple outselling Dell would make them #1, but that is a dumb way to look at the industry. It is Apple vs ALL of the Windows PC vendors and Apple is lucky to get into double digits when they only count retail sales, or just look at laptops or some other way to make Apple look bigger than they are.

Android is soundly whipping Apple in the smartphone space. Most counts still have RIM beating Apple. Apple had a brief moment but it is fading. Now they are having another moment in the tablet space while Android catches up. But Apple has a critical limitation, the urgent need to make 50 points on every sale to justify their market cap that is currently only challenged by Exxon-Mobil. They are selling cheap consumer electronics made by Chinese slave labor just like everyone else, only they expect to make fifty points. That can only happen when they can catch the rest of the consumer electronics industry with their pants down, which they have proven their ability to manage a few times now. But it never lasts long.

They've managed it since "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame". How many/.ers *remember* the Nomad? Apple has managed to innovate ahead of the pack for ten years now, an aeon in consumer electronics. Some of the competition is starting to get it, but I genuinely don't see any of them managing to really keep up just yet. And I certainly don't see the next piece of innovation from anyone but Apple. Sadly.

> Putting all Android devices in the same column opposite the iPhone is the same fanboy thinking..

No it isn't. Retailers don't really care if the Android devices are from a multitude of OEMs, they can stack em on the shelf beside each other because customers divide into iOS and Android nicely, Android customers not caring so much whose badge is on the product they are considering so much as which version of Android is loaded on it. Carriers don't care. App authors don't care, an App that works on an H

Sure many of them are because not everybody can afford an Apple product. And quite a few of them have better hardware that Apple's. Some are made in the same factory with the same sweatshop labor as Apple's. [foxconn] The fact remains that Android smartphone marketshare is almost triple what the iOS is worldwide and growing at a much faster rate than iOS. Back when Android was a fraction of Apple's marketshare Dear Leader Steve told his followers that there is no way that Android is going catch Apple in

Google is the 800 pound gorilla that you didn't notice in the corner of the room. He's coming at you so fast now that you can't get away. In other words; they're big and smart enough that they can do that and get away with it.

The lesson here is not about solid engineering, eye-catching design, or pricing.

Yes it is. The iPad is a solid products and has become the touchstone. If you want to compete with something that's perceived as the tablet you have be either:- significantly better and the same price- at least as good at a lower price

Sadly the TouchPad was neither. To bad too, I'd have liked Palm's progeny to at least survive.

Most people who bought an iPad don't even know the specs..

The vast majority of people don't know the specs of their PC's either. The great thing is that with tablets they don't have to. Tablets are bought on the following considerations: "Can I run the popular apps?", "Does it feel responsive?", "Does the battery last me at least a whole day of use?" The iPad kills on all 3 of these criteria. And what were the most often heard complaints against the Touchpad ? That it "felt slow" and there were no apps. No one except uber geeks cares about tablet specs.

Apple has gotten to the point where people just buy their products because everybody chants how great they are.

That's a myth. Apple users are some of the most critical around. That's why you keep hearing very vocal complaints about problems with Apple systems that impact a small minority of its users. And a lot of the new iPad/iPhone users who aren't traditional Apple fans would leave at the drop of a hat if something better came along. These are just regular consumers, not geeks, they go with what works.

Lion's not even been out a month! Those complaints should go to software vendors, not Apple.

It goes to Apple for the exact same reason driver issues in Vista went to MS. And in this case, it actually works if you boot into 32bit mode; Apples new 64bit breaks a lot of things.

The real issue is that it doesnt "just work" across 3 OS versions. 10.5? Have to use CiscoClient, since native Cisco Ipsec doesnt exist. 10.7? Have to use native client, since Cisco Client doesnt work.

Contrast that with windows, where I could run a single mass deployment disk using WPI that magically worked across every OS

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. It's all about timing and opportunity.

People thought Facebook was untouchable at some point too. Google+ is proving that sentiment wrong. If Google had released their thing a year earlier, it would have certainly flopped. If Google released their thing a year later, who knows how many other players would be out there diluting the market.

To further your boxing analogy, you might not be able to get into the ring with Apple, but that's why you draw them into the octag

When the iPod first came out ("No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame"), everyone thought it was just about the hardware, so concentrated on the technical specs. By the time it was realised that it was about the whole "Here's a way to manage your music that's easier than doing it by hand", they'd already cleaned up. The problem is, that once one company is dominant, their "new model" is now the "old model", so merely doing the same won't work.

It's not new either:Old model: buy a computer, and then install the operating system.New model: buy a PC, and the OS is pre-installed. (Microsoft's first big win)Competing on their terms and losing: buy an IBM PC, and get OS/2

Old model: buy your preferred word processor (WordPerfect or WordStar). Buy your preferred spreadsheet (Lotus 1-2-3 or SuperCalc). Maybe buy a drawing / presentation program (DrawPerfect or Harvard Graphics)New model: buy a suite, and you get the wordprocessor, spreadsheet and presentation software for just over the price of one of them. (Microsoft's second big win)Competing on their terms and losing: WordPerfect Office, Lotus SmartSuite

So, HP needed to do more than "tablet plus apps available", as that was just competing on their terms and losing.

This HP Touchpad Fire sale is the best lesson any Non Apple tablet manufacture should learn when it comes to tablet sales. The current Android tablet market is trying to command IPad pricing without being an Apple product. ICultists wont touch it with a 10 foot pole at any price because it's not made by Apple and everyone else that's on the fence is going to see the identical price and buy the Ipad because either they saw it on TV more / their ICult buddy recommended it and since they're priced the same might as well get what everyone else is talking about...

HP goes out and announces that WebOS hardware is dead, lets it sink in for a day or two, then cuts the price down from $399 and $499 to $99 and $149 respectfully and sells out in hours even though everyone knows they're discontinued and WebOS has a shaky future if any. If that doesn't scream that the tablet was overpriced than nothing on earth will.

Non Apple Tables are priced roughly $200-300 too expensive. Get them around $199-$299 and they'll sell like gangbusters just like it did for Android phones in the mobile market.

Actually, I own one of these tablets. (and I just bought a touchpad for my cousin) it's good for the price. Biggest disappointment though is the software. but the android community got some seriously good replacements for it.

If a factory stock honeycomb or Ice cream sandwich ever happens on the G tablet, it would be a no brainier at $279. It practically a no brainier even with the lackluster TapnTap android on the device.

I can't believe that the 16gb Touchpad couldn't sell at $249 or ever $299. At $399 is w

Yeah, lets forget for a second that the TouchPad was actually quite a buggy POS -- yet another unfinished product. That wouldn't have anything to do with people still going with the iPad, surely? Normal consumers just love to feel like they're special beta testers for some fancy new tech product!

If they went for $200-$300 at the moment, they'd either have to compromise on hardware, or cut their profits substantially.

The Acer Iconia has been selling at $399 with a $100 gift card or rebate at several stores recently (Best Buy, Amazon, Target, etc.) - which is effectively a $299 price point. The Iconia is pretty much a piece of shit, but I bet they were selling a lot of them at that price.

The Asus Transformer can be purchased at $349 [slickdeals.net] or less right now.

The problem is that right now it is still too expensive to manufacture a decent iPad competitor and sell it at $200. Each HP TouchPad, for example, was estimated

IBM had the most successful strategy against Job's Apple, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that the same strategy would still work even today. Once the other tablet players have command of a user and developer base, they can then go ahead and up their prices as well as their tech specs.

Everybody's trying to compete with Apple on its terms, without realizing that nobody can be Apple but Apple. But that doesn't mean they can't compete with Apple at all.

Non Apple Tables are priced roughly $200-300 too expensive. Get them around $199-$299 and they'll sell like gangbusters just like it did for Android phones in the mobile market.

That's only half true. I have seen plenty of android tablets under $200, some even under $100. Problem is they're generic off brand tablets with slow CPUs and bad screens that give android a bad name. What they need is a major manufacture like HP or HTC to sell $150 tablets with decent specs. But that will never happen because no manufacture wants to devalue their brand name by selling inexpensive merchandise, they all want to say "yes we sell a tablet and it's just as good as the iPad that's why it's t

What they need is a major manufacture like HP or HTC to sell $150 tablets with decent specs. But that will never happen because no manufacture wants to devalue their brand name by selling inexpensive merchandise

The above thinking is what's killing decent manufactures tablet hopes. All this strategy is doing is giving apple more money to build better IPads. They seriously need to throw this out and make a market first using cheap hardware, once you get the market in place then focus on competing with the Ipa

> ICultists wont touch it with a 10 foot pole at any price because it's> not made by Apple and everyone else that's on the fence is going> to see the identical price and buy the Ipad because either they saw> it on TV more / their ICult buddy recommended it and since they're> priced the same might as well get what everyone else is talking about

I am SO FUCKING SICK of all this "it's all because of fanboys/marketing/cultishness" shit! EVERY SINGLE MAJOR REVIEW of the TouchPad says it's barely in

until I realized it ran webOS. If it was Android, it would be a different story. Honestly, what made them use webOS? And price this thing the same as the iPad? Were they setting themselves up for failure purposefully?

What most of these tabled companies don't realize is that no one will pay the same price as the iPad for their tables because they are much more likely to just bail out of 2 consecutive sales reports aren't gangbusters. Apple is here to stay, so why would anyone buy a product that will likely be abandoned in a "focus realignment" meeting between some MBAs.

Really what company pays 1.2 billion for some software and then kills it in under 2 months?

I'm hoping that this decision was based on negotiation talks that HP was having with other manufacturers where the companies basically said ok we'll be willing to license WebOS from you as long as we don't have to compete on the hardware front with you. There's a business decision i think would be more in line with HP than automatically assuming they're idiots.

I think HP is being stupidly near-sighted by not continuing to invest in this. Even if HP wants to move towards the idea of 'enterprise integration', they could do what RIM is trying to do (belatedly) with the Playbook, and come up with a tablet for enterprise/industrial/OEM integration. I thought WebOS (and the Palm legacy) had the best basis to provide innovation/alternatives to the iPad; so far most of what we're seeing from Android has not been very inspiring.

$99.00 + tax here in Vancouver area. There was a line-up at the Best Buy when the doors opened. Everyone was saying "I don't really have a use for this, but it's too good and too cheap to pass up."

Not a bad price for a decent quality web browser for my coffee table. Looks nice enough, works great. I don't care about the lack of an app ecosystem - this is hackable, slick hardware. I'll find something to do with it.

You know, there are going to be hundreds of thousands of these things in people's hands in the next week or two, people who have never had a tablet before. HP just created a market for WebOS apps. By mistake? Hmm.

That Best Buy isn't going to honor the lower price or price match. They're shipping all their stock back to HP, who will probably then in turn offer them at hp.com at the reduced price.

I heard another rumor that if you bought a Touchpad at the full price recently that you should call HP and they might refund you the difference. Can't hurt to try if your Best Buy shafts you (and that's pretty much a given with Best Buy).

+1, insightful.
They shot themselves in the foot on this one. Had they just dropped the price to $99 and said nothing about being discontinued everyone would have bought it, communities would have sprung up devoted to it, developers would flock to it and they might have been a real iPad competitor. But they didn't. Fail.

They've got a pretty liberal return policy. Sometimes I "rent" from them until I am sure I want to buy something, and then I return it to best buy and order it online from Newegg or Amazon.

You were the kind of person we used to hate when I was in the hardware business; you'd 'rent' our hardware from the store, then return it and we'd then have to QA it again and sell it as a refurbished product.

It's not like I'm being dishonest here. When I return the item to Best Buy and they ask my reason for returning I tell them up front "I didn't like the product" or "I found it for $50 less online" - and they've never cared.

If they wanted to discourage this behavior they could do any number of things, like charging a restocking fee, offering to price match online retailers, or... and I know this is a stretch... just price things competitively to start with.

The reason that they don't do any of these things is that Best Buy is all about the impulse buy. They don't want their customers to research reviews or shop for the best price. Instead they offer up the guarantee that you can price match the product later or return it if you are unhappy, and bank on the fact that most people are going to be too lazy to take them up on the offer.

You were the kind of person we used to hate when I was in the hardware business; you'd 'rent' our hardware from the store, then return it and we'd then have to QA it again and sell it as a refurbished product.

Were the subject any other retailer, I'd say it was despicable. But Best Buy? I figure they deserve pretty much whatever happens to them. Maybe I'd feel different if members of my immediate family hadn't bought expensive new-in-box electronics from them, then got them home to find that they were quite used and banged up.

As soon as Best Buy loses its reputation for shady practices, borderline-retarded and flat out lying salespeople, and treating paid customers like shoplifters by attempting [*] to search sacks of purchased goods as people leave, maybe I'll be bothered to care what scams people [**] pull off against them. Until then, meh.

[*] Boy, they get pissy when you decline their "offer" to search your stuff.

[**] No, not me. I've happily avoided them altogether for over a decade. I wouldn't do those things because it's against my principals. I don't mind if you do, though, for much the same reason I wouldn't care if a pimp beat up a pickpocket.

or to return it at a 15%-20% restocking fee per Best Buys computers return poicy on opened items.

I doubt there would be a restocking fee. The reason Best Buy would extend the return policy would be either1) They want to remove ill will from people who just bought into a dead platform...sort of a way of saying "you won't regret buying from us" (yeah yeah, cue the jokes) Charging a restocking fee wouldn't accomplish this goal2) HP informed retailers that the product is discontinued, and they have 60 days to get them any returns back to them. In that case, Best Buy isn't eating the cost, so why should th